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spk03: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the EdTrend Holding Inc. third quarter 2022 earnings release conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at that time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star 1. Thank you. During the course of the conference call, ADTRAN representatives expect to make forward-looking statements that reflect management's best judgment based on factors currently known. However, these statements involve risks and uncertainties, including the continued spread and the extent of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. the ability of component supplies to align with customer demand, the successful development and market acceptance of our products, competition in the market for such products, the product and channel mix, component costs, freight and logistics costs, manufacturing efficiencies, our ability to effectively integrate mergers and acquisitions, and other risks detailed in our annual report on Form 10-K, for the year ending in December 31st, 2021, and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ending June 30th, 2022. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements which may be made during the call. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Tom Stanton, Chief Executive Officer of AdTrend Holdings. Sir, please go ahead.
spk10: Thank you, Brent. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for our third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. With me today is AdTrend Holdings CFO Mike Foliano. Following my opening remarks, Mike will review the quarterly financial performance in detail, and then we will take any questions that you may have. Q3 marked a new era for AdTrends. following the closure of the business combination agreement with ABDA Optical Networking on July 15th. This transition point is timely as it coincides with our industry continuing a rapid transition to the fiber everywhere era, especially in AdTrans highest growth regions in the U.S. and in Europe. Service providers have aggressive goals to rapidly deploy fiber to homes, businesses, and critical infrastructure sites while increasing customer satisfaction, streamlining operations, reducing energy consumption, and ensuring network security. Our vision is clear. We want to help service providers achieve these goals by having the most complete portfolio from optical core to the customer prem. This portfolio includes scalable, secure, and efficient networking infrastructure and customer premise platforms paired with best-in-class software. These solutions maximize subscriber experience while simplifying operations through automation. The combination with Adva provides us with the most complete portfolio to execute on this vision. Given that this is our first quarter of combined results with a full quarter of results from AdTrend, Inc., and a partial quarter from Adva, we have adjusted the revenue categories to reflect our broader fiber networking portfolio. The new revenue categories for both products and services are subscriber solutions, access and aggregation solutions, and optical networking solutions. These categories cover our complete portfolio of fiber networking products and services that span from the optical core network to the customer premise network. A more detailed breakdown of these categories is provided on our investors' website. As for integration planning, this process is well underway. We are on target, and the two companies remain excited by the customer reactions to the business combination. Looking at the results for the quarter, a key few points stand out. For one, we are very balanced geographically with our U.S. and non-U.S. business each contributing about 50% of the total revenue in the quarter. Second, each of our product categories along with our consolidated service offerings contributed meaningfully from a revenue perspective, highlighting our continued diversification across our combined portfolio. We believe this well-balanced and comprehensive fiber networking portfolio coupled with our strong global presence will continue to provide us with higher growth potential in this ongoing investment cycle in fiber networks. Our success in the quarter was driven primarily by a diverse mix of service providers that are upgrading their optical transport networks, deploying new fiber access networks, connecting residential and business subscribers to these fiber networks, and upgrading to multi-gigabit capability in-home Wi-Fi networks. Our strongest revenue contribution came from the U.S. and Europe, as expected, where operators continue to invest heavily in fiber networks and where we have a strong presence. Taking a closer look at the combined portfolio, let's step through each category of our portfolio and look at the key areas of investment and growth drivers. Starting with our optical network solutions, we see broad-based demand and a growing backlog for ADVIS optical transport solutions with a mix of service providers, internet content providers, government agencies, and large-scale enterprise customers. Demand remains strong from large-scale transport systems to to internally developed optical modules and pluggable transceivers. This category has several exciting developments, especially in the metro edge, with a mix of optical modules, advanced security solutions, and edge-optimized platforms that are an ideal complement to AdTrans fiber access and aggregation solutions. Building on our innovations in optical networking, ADVA recently announced the creation of ANS. a wholly owned but separate company to serve the increasing requirements for secure network infrastructure. The new legal entity specializes in secure transmission technology to protect highly sensitive communication networks from cyber attacks. ANS will collaborate with national security organizations to ensure end-to-end networking protection that meets the highest industry requirements, including safeguarding data against strikes from quantum computers. Moving to our fiber access and aggregation solutions, we continue to see great demand for our 10-gig fiber access platforms. In the latest industry market share report from Del Oro, Atran held the number two market position in North America and number three market position in EMEA for 10-gig pond aggregation port shipments. We are now pairing these fiber access platforms with industry-leading carrier Ethernet aggregation and network synchronization solutions from ADVA that will further enhance our ability to meet the fiber access and aggregation needs for all subscriber types. In the subscriber solutions category, we saw tremendous growth during the quarter. On the residential side, where the growth is the highest, we are benefiting from enhancements to our cloud-managed multi-gig mesh Wi-Fi 6 solution offering and the growing number of subscribers that are now connecting homes that were previously passed with our fiber access platforms. On the business side, we now have a much broader solution offering, ranging from carrier Ethernet edge devices and network virtualization solutions to enterprise class routers and switches. These solutions, which are also complementary to our residential offerings and aggregation solutions, help fuel additional growth in our subscriber solution segment. Incorporated into each of these product categories are software solutions, led by AdTrans Mosaic One SaaS platform. AdTrans SaaS customer base, which includes hundreds of service providers, is up 31% year over year. And this includes more than 100 plus service providers that have adopted the latest version of our Mosaic One platform. With a much broader portfolio and larger customer base in the combined company, along with expanding capabilities and AdTrans SaaS portfolio, we expect to further accelerate growth in this strategic area. Looking ahead, we have a lot of exciting developments in the optical networking space. The recently launched 100 ZR pluggable coherent transceiver is a solution that is an ideal match for AdTrans access and aggregation portfolio. by greatly reducing the cost, power, and space needed to deploy 100-gig connectivity deeper into the network for mobile backhaul, fiber access backhaul, or large-scale enterprise service delivery. In addition to the 100ZR, we also announced the AccessWave optical module, which simplifies deployment of 25-gig point-to-point services for mobile backhaul, mobile front haul, and enterprise service delivery. In the access and aggregation space, AdTrend is expanding its lead in open disaggregated fiber access platforms with a much anticipated launch of the SDX6330. This is the densest, highest capacity, and most energy efficient 10-gig fiber access platform in the industry and is well ahead of the competition in terms of scale, performance, cost, and expandability. On the subscriber side, Antred is having great success with its SDG series of platforms for Wi-Fi 6 and is expanding these solutions to incorporate Wi-Fi 6E and business class features for work from home and small business users. And the software space would continue to make great advancements in our Mosaic portfolio, helping service providers automate the management of both customer premise and network infrastructure, while providing end users with tools needed to maximize their service experience. With the combined company, we will be integrating the complete portfolio from the optical core to the customer premise under a seamless management environment with AdTrans Mosaic One platform. This will both improve subscriber experience and increase operational efficiency. The success we are having in these focus platforms along with the exciting innovations on our roadmap have us well positioned for further growth during this ongoing investment cycle in fiber networks. Our key regions in the US and Europe view fiber networks as critical infrastructure, and sizable public investments remain ahead to ensure their deployment. While supply chain issues continue to impact us, the outlook is improving. Given these factors, we remain very optimistic about our future. With this background, I will turn things over to Mike to provide a review of our financials. And then following Mike's remarks, we will answer any questions you may have. Mike?
spk11: Thank you, Tom, and good day to all. I'll cover our third quarter 2022 results and provide our expectations for the fourth quarter. Please note that this is the first quarter for AdTran Holdings, Inc., which includes the consolidation of the ADVA financials for a partial quarter beginning at the finalization of the business combination on July 15th. which affects year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter comparisons. Since this is the case, I will refrain from repeating the first-time consolidation effects when discussing year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter comparisons of our results. I will be referencing non-GAAP information with reconciliations to GAAP presented in our press release and supplemental financial schedules on our investor relations page at investors.adtran.com. The supplemental financial schedules on our webpage also provide certain information by segment and category, which I'll also be discussing today. ADTRAN's third quarter 2022 revenue came in at $340.7 million, up 147% year over year, and exceeded the upper end of our guidance range of $320 to $340 million. Inclusive of ADVA revenues, Our network solutions segment makes up 90% of revenues in Q3 2022 compared to 87% in Q3 of 21. Our services and support segment contributed 10% of revenues in Q3 2022 compared to 13% in the year-ago quarter. Year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter revenue increases are driven by our subscriber solutions category, which makes up 39% of revenues compared to 34% in Q3 of 21 and 46% in the previous quarter. The newly introduced technology category optical networking solutions includes the optical networking or cloud interconnect portfolio of ADVA and contributed 35% of revenues. Access and aggregation revenue share was 26% compared to 66% in the year-ago quarter and 54% in Q2 of 2022. On a regional basis year-over-year, domestic revenue grew by 85% and international revenue increased by 270%. Domestic and international revenues are split about equally with about 50% of our revenues each providing a more balanced business with an expanded portfolio and global footprint. Our customer diversity continues to be a focus with two 10 percent of revenue customers, one U.S. service provider customer, and one international service provider customer. Q3 non-GAAP gross margin was 38.1 percent, improving by 3.5 percentage points year over year and 1.7 percentage points sequentially. Increase in gross margin is due to an improved customer and product mix in the combined company and improvement in supply chain expenses partially offset by unfavorable currency developments. GAAP gross margin is inclusive of 25.5 million acquisition-related expenses, amortization and adjustments due to the business combination with ADBA. While we anticipate continued supply chain challenges, we remain focused on managing higher component costs, freight expenses, and expedite fees. Our non-GAAP operating expenses were $109 million, increasing by 116% year-over-year and 101% quarter-over-quarter. Operating expenses were 32% of revenues compared to 36.5% of revenues in Q3 2021. and 31.5 percent in Q2 of 22. Non-GAAP operating profitability was $20.9 million, which translates into a non-GAAP operating margin of 6.1 percent compared to negative 1.9 percent in Q3 of 21 and 4.9 percent in the previous quarter. The improvement in operating profitability was driven by higher revenue volume at more favorable gross margins. Other income on a non-GAAP basis decreased year-over-year and increased quarter-over-quarter. The decrease on a year-over-year basis was mainly driven by market-related losses and impairments in our investment portfolio and higher interest expense related to our credit agreements, partially offset by favorable realized foreign currency exchange fluctuations. Quarter-over-quarter improvement was mainly due to higher favorable realized foreign currency exchange fluctuations that offset higher interest expense and investment losses. The company's non-GAAP tax provision for the third quarter was an expense of $8.8 million, or 42% tax rate, primarily driven by the change in our annual estimated effective tax rate related to the closing of the business combination with ADVA during the quarter and the requirement to capitalize R&D expense in the U.S. beginning in 2022 and the subsequent effect on our valuation allowance. Closing out our income statement results, non-GAAP net income was $12.2 million and $7.7 million after adjusting for minority shareholder interest in ADVA. This results in EPS attributed to the company of 11 cents per share. The significant difference in non-GAAP net income of 12.2 million and GAAP net loss of 44.9 million is mainly due to purchase accounting adjustments, which also explains the significant difference in non-GAAP net income of 7.7 million and GAAP net loss of 41.9 million. after eliminating the minority interest. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow statement, cash and cash equivalents totaled $111.1 million at quarter end. For the quarter, we used $36.8 million of cash for operations, mainly due to deal closure expenses and an increase in working capital. Net trade accounts receivable were $302 million at quarter end. resulting in DSO of 82 days compared to 91 days in the prior quarter. Net inventories were $416 million at the end of the third quarter, resulting in inventory turns of 3.1 compared to 2.4 in the second quarter of 2022. Both companies continue to carry a higher level of inventory and raw materials as we build supply to minimize further disruptions given the challenging electronic component market and extended lead times. Trade account payables were $276 million, resulting in a DPO of 71 compared to 100 in the previous quarter. Once again, Q3 was the first quarter, which includes ADVA financials for a partial quarter beginning at the finalization of the business combination, on July 15th. The fourth quarter, however, will be the first quarter that fully includes Advo Financials. Integration planning process is progressing well, and we have now aligned our earnings call schedules to coincide on the same day. We've also taken further steps in the integration of our combined IR efforts and will align our key performance indicators as we guide in the future. Going forward, we will provide guidance on revenue and non-GAAP operating margin, similar to the guidance measures provided by ADVA. Looking ahead at the final quarter of the year, the continuing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ability of component supplies to align with customer demand, the book and ship nature of our business, the timing of revenue associated with large projects, the variability of ordering patterns, from our customer base, as well as the fluctuation in currency rates, and any additional required purchase accounting adjustments related to the ADVA merger may cause material differences between our expectations and the actual results. With that in mind, our fourth quarter 2022 revenue is expected to be between $355 and $375 million, and we expect a non-GAAP operating margin between 5% and 6.5%. Once again, additional financial information is available at ADTRAN's Investor Relations page at investors.adtran.com. Now I'll turn it back over to Tom, and we will take any questions that you may have.
spk10: Okay, thanks, Mike. All right, Brent, at this time, we're ready to open up to any questions people may have.
spk03: At this time, if you would like to ask a question, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from Paul Silverstein with Cowan. Your line is open.
spk08: Thanks. Tom and Mike, last week, Thursday night, you had the Abiy talking about weakness in particular in their field test equipment, I assume directly related to FTTP. And they indicated the weakness was general in nature. I heard that offline they were saying AT&T, Lumen, perhaps some others. It raises an obvious concern. I trust from your comments, you certainly seem to be suggesting that you're not seeing that weakness. But let me ask you the direct question. Are you seeing, are any of your customers, especially the larger ones, indicating to you a coming pullback, cutback, however you want to term it, of any nature that would adversely impact future revenue?
spk07: No. No. The answer is no.
spk10: In fact, we have, of course, hundreds and hundreds of customers. There are I will tell you that at any point in time, some customers are pulling back or moving forward. There are some that are worried about capital. You know, there's always this capital shift that goes on towards the end of the year, which sometimes helps you and sometimes hurts you. But those are in the noise, especially when you take a look at the backlog we have. So those are in the noise. And explicitly towards the large customers, the answer is no.
spk07: Okay.
spk08: Mike, if I heard you correctly, I think you said the balance sheet was $111 million of cash. I haven't had a chance to look directly. Was that the number?
spk11: That's right, $111.1.
spk08: I think you probably stated that you plan to take out the remaining shares of Adva with cash. I understand it's not going to happen overnight. It's probably still a year, year plus to fully accomplish the full acquisition. But it begs the obvious question. You've only got $111. If I do the basic back of the elbow math, it's about $350 plus million, I think, that you need to take out the remaining shares. The direct question would be, I assume you don't want to raise debt financing at these interest rates. That begs the question. The only way to do it, I guess, would be for you all to do it secondary, no?
spk11: Well, that's not the only way to do it, but that is one possibility. We have lined up the debt to do it. The number is a little bit less than what you said. It's closer to $300 right now to take out the rest of them with the current offer price, the put price in the DPLTA agreement that is still working its way through approval by the adverse shareholders. So the plan has been to do it with debt, to do it with earnings from the company, but also there are other options that we will explore.
spk10: I think we secure the debt just to make sure that we have a backstop that allows us to have flexibility, but as we get closer to those periods of time, we'll make the call as the question comes up.
spk08: Got it. One more, if I may. Tom, going back to the quarterly question of how is the ramp at the various Huawei displacement opportunities, both the ones you've already secured like BT that are already ramping, as well as any update you can give us on the number of awards that might have converted or the number of RFPs or other opportunities that might have converted into awards and the remaining outstanding RFPs that haven't yet been awarded. Any update would be appreciated.
spk10: Yeah, there are a handful that we have won that we are in the process of say monetizing, that may be a strong, that may be a tough word, but it's really coming online and then monetizing. I think this quarter we, I'll give ourselves some times between where we are now in the end of Q1, we expect roughly four new European, these are all tier ones, so these are, now some countries are bigger than others, to start ordering and deploying. Now, they will take some time to ramp up, but those seem to be going well. Our biggest, you know, we are launching, I mentioned in my notes that we're launching the 6330, which is a new generation of disaggregated fiber platform that allows, you know, 10 gig and really high density, really low power. It's just a fantastic platform. So that's just starting to come out. We will start first production of that at the end of this year is what it's scheduled for right now. We will start lab entry, and we've already started lab entry with some of our current generation product. But the key to that being really coming online is the successful deployment of the 6330, which really changes kind of the economics of fiber deployment in that larger space. So those kind of coincide with each other. But anyways, a handful of them will come online between now and the end of Q1. There are a couple more after that, which will happen, you know, probably in the Q3 timeframe. And there are, I asked that question this morning, there are about four different kind of very large tier one opportunities that are kind of in play over the next, let's say, three quarters or so that haven't been decided yet.
spk08: Tom, so four options that haven't been decided, four brand new awards, And then can you remind us the number of awards previously were how many?
spk10: We had six tier ones in Europe. One tier one here. The four, so we have two that were modified. So that's really those four. The additional four.
spk08: Those four being new relative to what you previously shared with us?
spk10: No, new relative to what we're shipping. Right. So not new relative to what I'm talking about. Basically, of the six, the other four are coming online between now and the end of Q1.
spk08: Tell me online being initial revenue.
spk10: Initial revenue, yes.
spk08: And you mentioned they're all different sizes. Are any one of the four, are they, you know, a tier one of the type of a BT, a GT, that type of tier one?
spk10: Honestly, nothing is as big as BT at this point in time because they're just, you know, they're doing a lot of things at one time. They're kind of in the tier. I would say they're probably slightly, you know, some of them, the bigger ones are right in the DT or slightly below that range, but it's a little lumpy. So some of them have Some Huawei replacement things, projects that are coming online fairly early, some of them have them geared towards the end of the year, next year or so. It depends on the carrier. And then there will be periods of time where they pop up and then go back down to a normal run rate. So it's really hard to categorize them. In the life, in the total span, BT and DT are still, you know, the biggest things out there.
spk08: But, Tom, from the way you just described it, it sounds like in the aggregate those are worth at least in the tens, I assume, collectively in the $50 to $100 million type range, if not more. I don't know if I go that far.
spk10: I would say we think about them in the tens, yes. Individually or collectively? Oh, individually. Individually. Someone will be 10, someone will be 8, someone will be 15, and someone will pop up to 20 when they do a big replacement. Okay.
spk08: I appreciate the responses. I'll pass it on. Thank you. All right. All right.
spk03: Your next question is from Fahad Najam with Loop Capital. Your line is open.
spk06: Hey, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. One, if you look at ADWA, which is really trading the four-year outlook, then it sounds like for the fourth quarter, your organic guidance is slightly a bit lower than what I would have anticipated given the improving supply chain outlook and the backlog that you're carrying. Can you be partial a bit about what you're seeing in terms of the supply chain dynamics and regarding your ad trend organic guidance of fourth quarter? And I have a couple of follow-ups.
spk10: Yeah, let me take a stab at this, and then Mike can take over. I mean, I would be surprised. You know, we have our internal projections of what we think the mix will be. Q4 is coming out pretty much where we were hoping Q4 was going to come out. So I'm not sure what your numbers are versus, you know, kind of what our numbers are, but it's pretty much right in line. We're still assuming supply chain is getting better, but it is not – you know, we're talking about the overall environment. There are specific things that are still difficult, and we're assuming that that difficulty doesn't cure itself this quarter. I mean, really, my comments are really, you know, kind of as we move going forward, I do absolutely think that by the half of next year, most of those issues will have been solved. But the environment although the number of parts is less, the criticality of the individual parts is as high as it's ever been. So we're really expecting an environment that's very similar to what we saw in Q3, which was very similar to Q2. But I don't know what the disappointment is from your numbers, because like I said, we're pretty much right where we expect to be. Okay.
spk06: If I may, can you maybe describe a little bit about what you're seeing between the tier 1 and the tier 2 and tier 3 in North America. I suspect even if we take the obvious comments at face value, which relates to primarily tier 1, one of which is not your customer. I still think that tier 2, tier 3 CapEx Outlook is really solid. So maybe can you just talk a little bit about what you're seeing between the tier one, the dynamics between the tier one and tier two, tier three in the US and also in EMEA?
spk10: Yeah, really no change in EMEA. Just broadly speaking, there's really no, there's been no change at all in the US. I'm not familiar with the tier one that Paul mentioned as far as what they're, Explicit activity is because we don't really sell to that customer. Our other tier one here in the US and not just that, but it's including the MSO space. Really hasn't slowed down at all so. In fact, our tier one in the US we had just started ramping. We've gotten. Orders on top of that initial ramp. They've updated their forecast for next year, so I haven't seen any any slow down there. If you go down to the kind of the next You always see in that space towards the end of the year movements in capital this way or that way, depending on where they are in their program. So I don't see anything that's systemic there. I have some customers that are doing more. I have other customers that are doing less. But in aggregate, no material change from what we normally see. And all of this, by the way, it I still have backlog that everybody's asking me to ship. So it really isn't that impactful over the near term. You know, the longer term, you know, we worry about the recession as much as everybody else does. We think a lot of the momentum here, you know, there's tiers that a recession would impact. The government spending piece seems to be very, very solid. The kind of larger carry initiative piece seems to be very, very solid. Most of these people, their definition of success is how quickly they deploy broadband, and the take rates seem to be going way above expectations. Tier 3, no real change in the Tier 3 space either. So I'm not saying that there aren't pockets. I don't know if these pockets are because changes in capital, long-term capital spend, or because of kind of nearer-term capital forecasting and where they are with budgets. But in general, the environment hasn't changed. I will tell you, I worry like everybody else about what a longer recession would do to the macro economy and then into the vertical that we play in. But right now, I haven't seen it.
spk06: One last follow-up, if I may. So if you look at 2023, you still have the significant stimulus funds that are yet to flow. RDoS is just trickling. And the cable MSOs are beginning their DOCSIS 4.0 upgrade cycle. So how are you thinking about calendar 23? I know you're mindful of the recession, but shouldn't your, especially your Tier 2, Tier 3, and Tier 4 customer segments and the cable segments should really be more resilient in the face of a macroeconomic environment?
spk10: Yeah. I mean, if you think about how recessions impact these things, first of all, broadband is important. pretty much up there close to electricity. I don't mean to be overstating that, and I don't mean to offend anybody, but it's pretty much a requirement. So I think it's a very resilient piece. I think there are pieces where you have companies that are themselves betting on capital markets in order for funding, you know, those are the ones that you have to watch out for. I think enterprise spending, you tend to see a downtick in enterprise spending when you have these type of problems. But, you know, the longer term impact to capital budgets on the carrier side, they tend to take a long time to come to fruition. So I think, you know, the depth of the recession is important. If those of you that will remember Kind of the last recession was when we, during the financial crisis, or at least the last one that really kicked into my head. And the company was very resilient during that period of time. And, yeah, I don't expect a change here. I think we'll just have to watch it, though. The debt is really the thing that I would worry about, but right now we don't see it.
spk06: I appreciate the answer. Thank you.
spk10: Okay.
spk03: Your next question is from Michael Genovese with Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.
spk04: Michael Genovese Thanks a lot. Have you given or can you give the total ADVA revenue that was recognized in the quarter?
spk07: Michael Genovese Yes, we can.
spk11: I'll just give you a percentage of the total. So for the total quarter revenue, ADTRAN was 52% and ADVA was 48%. Okay, great.
spk04: Perfect. And now, is this the – is the ownership structure pretty set? I mean, so ADVA is going to continue to have a separate conference call every quarter, and the, you know, income attributable to – you know, non-AdTran shareholders is going to stay about the same percentage, or will that change going forward?
spk10: I mentioned, I think I mentioned the DPL, did I mention the DPLTA timing?
spk11: Yeah, I can. So, Mike, there is a plan to work our way to a domination agreement, and I think you might have seen some of the releases that came out with that, that it needs to be approved at the shareholder meeting of ADVA, which is now scheduled for the 30th of November. After that agreement, there's other things that we will be able to do to move the profits away from the ADVA entity and over toward the ADTRAN entities. They will continue to have a conference call as long as they're traded. At some point in the future, there would be a delisting offer, and we would actually delist those shares. But that kind of goes back to the same question that Paul asked earlier about our plan is actually to buy up the rest of those shares, and then that would be a wholly owned subsidiary of AdTrend in the longer term.
spk04: Okay, great. So you've been asked, I'm not going to ask again, you know, about the macro risk to sort of, you know, ADVA's, you know, European, you know, metro and sort of enterprise optical revenues. I think you've answered that pretty clearly and pretty, pretty bullishly, I would say. But it looks like overall out there in the supply chain that optical does seem to be the most supply constrained. I mean, that's the message from Nokia and and others who plan multiple areas that, you know, some of these analog parts specifically needed for optical are the most supply constrained. Is that what you're seeing? Because, I mean, the performance there looks pretty good. So do you have any insight on how they're managing that maybe better than some of the larger companies in the optical networking space?
spk10: I would say in general that it is managing it better than some of the other players in the optical space. They still have issues. The majority of the issues that I see and that I think we see collectively are not specific to optical. First of all, there are still these issues associated with power supply, analog devices that aren't specific to the optical space, and then there are kind of key processors. They have some key processors, and we have some key processors, which are still, you know, my biggest issue this quarter, it has typically been kind of glue logic. I now have some very specific processor issues, and they have some very specific processor issues that they're working through this quarter. So I don't think that the issues on the ADBA side are any deeper or materially different than the issues that we're seeing on the ad trend side.
spk11: And in the combined companies, it's still affecting our gross margins. I think in the past I've tried to lay out the impact on our gross margins, and although it is improving somewhat, it was still nearly 3.5 percentage points that was due to purchase price variation, expedite fees, and freight costs that have been elevated. Now, the bright spot so far is that freight is finally moving in the right direction, but the other ones, there are still a pretty good amount of flow through of additional costs that we're paying to be able to obtain those components in the timeframe that they're needed.
spk04: Great. I appreciate the call. Thanks very much.
spk03: Your next question is from the line of Ryan Kuntz with Needham & Company. Your line is open.
spk05: Thanks for the question. We've asked about your different product areas. It sounds like, Tom, from your remarks that subscriber solutions is the one maybe outperformed where the upside came from. Is And is that more demand related or is it kind of alleviating of the supply chain constrictions? Can you make any commentary and kind of put some takes on the quarter and kind of think about the product going forward to be helpful?
spk10: I think, you know, I don't have my notes in front of me, but I think I mentioned on last quarter that we saw that the survivor solutions was probably the area where we had the most work to do. We needed to get stuff to ship and we needed to add more focus into that area to make sure, you know, once customers get a network employed, it's really important for them to be actually turning customers on to that network, you know, for obvious reasons. So we really focused on that and saw really good movement there this quarter. So that was, I think, by far the biggest kind of year-over-year increase for the company. We've had plenty of backlog in that area for a long time, so it was a matter of us. The demand was still strong, but it was a matter of us kind of clearing out some of that backlog and moving that number in the right direction to help customers. I would call it more of a proprietary call than anything, you know, significantly shifting in the space.
spk05: Got it. And have you seen any help on the kind of share side where – you may be able to execute a little better than some of your peers and able to take share in any cases in this case, able to share?
spk10: Yeah, but the share is really the way it has been happening, maybe a little bit different in Europe, but in general, the way that share happens is that share is kind of given to you as you win the OLT business. So as you win the infrastructure piece, then most times they're going to move forward with your ONTs and many times, if not most times, your RG as well. So this was kind of share that we have been winning, and it's just a matter of us being able to monetize that share.
spk05: Got it. Super helpful. And just a quick clarification on Jim's comment earlier, or Mike's comment earlier about 350 basis points impacting a quarter from supply chain expedites and such.
spk07: Is that what I heard? That's correct. Great. Let's go ahead. Thanks so much. All right.
spk03: Your next question is from the line of Paul Essie with William K. Woodruff & Company. Your line is open.
spk02: Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to talk a little bit about ADBA's competitive position. I know that they've concentrated their focus from the core to the edge, where some of the larger players have not put as much resources in that area, mostly concentrating on the long haul. Now, I was wondering how this is going to affect adverse competitive position down in that space from basically the core to the edge given their spending? And also, how does the encryption and their security expertise fit into this, first of all? And then secondly, if maybe – I know you touched on it, Tom. Maybe you can give us a little bit more color on this 100 ZR that you jointly developed and what that might mean for revenues going into 23 and 24. and also who the customers that you may be selling that to, and also if you could touch a little bit about the access ways as well.
spk07: And I had a follow-up.
spk09: Okay.
spk07: That's a bunch of questions.
spk10: All right. So let me, well, I'll cover the ANS piece first. So ANS is actually stands for Adva, what was it, Mike? Adva.
spk11: Network security.
spk10: Yeah, Adva Network Security. So when we combined the companies, we, of course, had to have government approval from several different countries.
spk09: And ANS was a piece of that negotiation with the German government in order to make sure that the technology that is being used by various entities within the German government remained at the right security level for them to be able to continue to use that. The technology that's coming out of that group is something that can be used by the entire company, although there's still kind of a real wall between what's done for different countries, not in similar to what happens here in the U.S., by the way.
spk10: So this was a means for us to be able to continue that development, continue Germany, which is an important customer, and actually allow us to get to another level of security within the government to actually enhance sales. So over time, we think it's a very good move. It's a very profitable move as well, and they really have differentiated security in that vein. So this was just part of the merger. It was something that I think was going to happen anyways because I think it made sense for ADVA, but it kind of opened up different revenue streams and different technology streams that we wouldn't have had in the past. In relation to how these things flow and what ADVA's focus has been, I tend to think of them as last mile or metro edge. It's kind of where their kind of hot spot is in relation to optical. The reason they were a good fit for us is that's exactly where our customer base is looking at augmenting at this point. Their network, as they kind of finish out these last mile networks that they're building, I shouldn't say finish out because we're a long ways to go, but as they increase the capacity requirements of those last mile networks, they need to be able to aggregate and efficiently transport that traffic. So that's kind of where their sweet spot was. And we're already seeing cross-selling opportunities across both companies where they dovetail each other. They have a very good product, a very competitive product, and we feel good about where that's at. Mike, you got the information on the 100 CR?
spk11: Yeah, that product actually is commercially available next year, so I really can't tell you what the revenues are at this point, but it will fit in for service providers as well as MSOs is the market that it's targeted toward. So we'll have more information to come on that as it's released.
spk02: Okay. The other follow-up question, again, is on the SAS subscribers. Is there anything that you can share with us? I think you were at 1 million, 3 million, 4, something like that at the end of June. Can you talk to that at all and give us a little flavor for how that's going, maybe some hard numbers?
spk10: Well, you can think about SAS subscribers. Let me put it in a way that we actually have the numbers for. So you can think about SAS subscribers as a fallout to SAS carriers, right? And our SAS carrier growth was up 31% year over year this quarter. And that's been about the rate that it has been ticking along at. SAS customer growth will typically outpace SAS carrier growth because, in fact, it will outpace, right, because you have new carriers coming online, plus you have the older carriers being more mature and adding more subscribers to their network.
spk02: Okay. I was trying to focus on the actual number that your customers have signed up of their subscribers. Do you have anything available on that, the actual paying customers that close up to you guys?
spk10: I don't have the growth rate on that number, Mike. I know it's well in excess. You mentioned before, and I mentioned before, it's over 1.2 million. Actually, it's closer to 2 million at this point, but I don't know if I have that. I don't have that number in front of me.
spk02: Okay. That's good. Thank you very much.
spk10: All right. Thanks very much.
spk03: Your next question is from the line of Tim Savageau with Northland Capital Markets. Your line is open.
spk01: Hey, good afternoon. I want to make sure I get this one in there, which is if we can address kind of where you expect the tax rate to go over time. It's been kind of bouncing around, but that's not my main question, but I want to make sure I don't forget it. Where I did want to focus is on the kind of AdTran organic front and It's been discussed before, it looks like subscriber was driving the growth. You actually saw access and aggregation down a bit, both sequential and year-over-year. I wonder if you could address dynamics there for the quarter. And then as you look at the guide, it looks like organically you're guiding down a bit sequentially from an AdTran perspective. Is that just really normalizing that supply catch-up on the subscriber side or you know, how do you expect things to break down between, you know, do you expect any growth on the access and aggregation side in Q4? Thanks.
spk11: Let's start with the tax question.
spk10: Go ahead.
spk11: And then we can move to the other piece. So you're right, our tax rate has bounced around a lot as we've gone through the quarters this year. And you saw the 42% effective rate there on a non gap basis in Q3. I would expect that going forward that for the year estimating that it's probably going to be about in the high teens, which is a little lower than what we had said previously. So probably high teens somewhere sub 20. But to get to that rate for the year, I think for Q4, we will still have an elevated tax rate that will be something similar to what we saw in Q3. So if you look at the total year and adjust that out, you actually end up with something that's probably also in the low 40s again. And then as moving into the next years, I think you're a lot better off to try to model it somewhere at... Just under 20%.
spk10: In relation to the guidance, I mean, the guidance is basically flat, which is, you know, as you probably know, if you follow us, typically we see a down Q4. So like I said, it's pretty much in line with what we expected it to be. In relation to aggregation, we have a lot of irons in the fire there. We have backlog that would allow us to actually materially grow that number from this space. We're also trying to still get a lot of CPE out the door, a lot of the subscriber solutions pieces out the door. And then we really have a ramp-up of the 6330, which is kind of a critical ramp-up for us, which should start at the end of the quarter. So, I mean, we have a lot of different ways to get there, but, you know, I can't tell you explicitly what that aggregation number is going to look like at this point.
spk01: Okay, thank you.
spk07: Okay.
spk03: Your next question comes from Paul Silverstein with Cowan. Your line is open.
spk08: Paul, didn't you already answer the question? Thanks. It's at the Appleton. Three questions, if I might. ADVA, going back to macro concerns, ADVA, correct me if I'm wrong, historically they've derived about 30%, I think, of their revenue from enterprise with the bulk of that, I believe, being in Europe consistent with them being headquartered in Europe and having done a good job in Europe historically. One would think that European enterprise would be most at risk from macro. Again, it doesn't sound from your guidance, but I got to ask, any signs of weakness? And then I got two other quick questions.
spk10: No, and a lot of that is kind of their Ethernet product. And, you know, just no. The answer is no. I mean, you know, from any way you look at it, I won't tell you that it won't be impacted, but I will tell you we haven't seen that impact yet.
spk08: All right. Going back to, Mike, going back to the Mosaic SAS number you gave or the SAS number, that was number of carriers. Was that the 31% year-over-year increase you were referencing for your service provider customers? That have adopted? Is that what that's for? Okay.
spk10: That's correct. And breaking it down to subscribers, I mean, we can't do that. We just haven't done that.
spk08: Right. And I assume also by extension that if we spoke in terms of revenue, you can't share with us. Well, I assume the number is very small at this point.
spk10: If I look at my software and service number, which includes contracts associated with software and maintenance, the number's getting to be, yeah, the growth rate has been solid for the last two years, but I don't think it's going to be too far to where we actually start just breaking those numbers out so you can see them. I'm looking for stability and I'm looking for a longer term growth. You know, the key is I want to be confident about the growth rate and kind of where we are with that product line before I start, you know, and making sure that, you know, that we're in a mature place there. And I don't think we're quite there yet.
spk08: And Tom, my apologies if you said this in the past, but is it over $10 million or well less than $10 million? No, no, no. Dollars?
spk10: Yeah.
spk08: I assume it's...
spk10: Yeah, it's over. It's our software and SAS number. Let me see if I... Well, it is over $10 million, but that is not just SAS.
spk09: Yeah, that includes software.
spk10: That's the whole software category. Software and SAS is over $10 million, yes.
spk08: All right. I'll move on. My last question. Mike, on the gross margin progression, you all have seen a more significant recovery than most, but you were also on the more severe end in terms of the impact of supply chain, the initial impact in getting hit. My question to you is, looking forward, any thoughts on how far, how fast you can get back to the low 40s from once you came? And I understand now there's that in the mix, but their margin structure, if I remember on a like-for-like basis, I use a U.S. non-GAAP, was actually a little bit better, I think, than your margin structure. And one last point in connection with the question. Correct me if I'm wrong, but subscriber solutions, it's got a lot of different products, including software in there, but I assume the dominant revenue is from your relatively lower margin or absolutely low margin ONT platforms that you refer to as being a big part of the year of your growth, which is counterintuitive given the nice... rebound you saw, I guess another way to state it is you put up strong growth or strong recovering gross margin, notwithstanding what I would think would be the negative, the drag effect of that big increase in ONT revenue, which is encouraging all of things to be equal. But any insight you could share, Michael, what happened to the quarter? And more importantly, what do you expect?
spk10: Let me take the first stab at that, which is on the second part of your question. First of all, that is Fairly insightful, yes. We did ship a lot more CPE on purpose, and yeah, they were able to come up with pretty decent gross margins on what is typically a very low gross margin mix. I will tell you that has been absolutely helped by the software sales associated with that piece. which was impactful. And then there's a secondary help, which is some of the functionality, including things like 10 gig, are also helpful. But in general, yeah, it was a pretty good quarter from a gross margin perspective for Scriber Solutions. Mike, I don't know if you want to cover the first part.
spk11: Yeah, so Paul, some of it was mixed, but you heard me say that there's about three and a half percentage points of still headwinds. I think when I reported last quarter, I was at about 4.6, if I recall, or 4.7. So it's definitely moving in the right direction. The biggest improvement so far has been in freight and logistics where rates are starting to fall and things are starting to free up. As far as paying extra fees to be able to get components, I think you heard Tom say there are fewer issues, but there's still some big issues that all have to be resolved and worked. So I think overall that's moving in the right direction. We're seeing fewer and fewer of the broker buys and excessive payments to be able to get components. Now, some of that's still on the balance sheet. So it will, for ones that we may have purchased in prior quarters at higher costs, that will bleed off over time as we go. But I think you saw a pretty good improvement in the quarter moving in the right direction We do have a different headwind, but we've had for some amount of time, and that's just the FX issues that are out there with the euro and the pound sterling when you roll those back to dollars. And if you tried to just look at that over the last quarter and say what was the effect on gross margin on that one, it's almost two percentage points, maybe a little bit less than that. So I think that one has somewhat stabilized at this point, but I think over the last quarters, we've seen that whole flow on the downward trend with the dollar strengthening as well. So I think we're just learning how to manage it all better as we go.
spk08: Mike, I know you didn't give guidance for gross margin, but any thoughts, given all those puts and takes, any thoughts on what type of gross margin you could generate in Q4?
spk11: I I think it may be just a bit stronger sequentially, but I'm not. I'm not expecting much.
spk10: Think about it kind of in the same range of where we are right now. Very close.
spk11: Yeah, and I think your question was when do we get back to back to 40 and I I think I'm pretty confident as we go through next year we will continue to move in that direction and sometime in 2023. barring any kind of other craziness that happens.
spk10: We should be here, and we should have some, you know, mix improvement, even though SS&E is, was pretty good. It's still not the same as, you know, what we get on the access and aggregation side. All right. Anything else, Paul?
spk08: I, well, Tom, just to be clear, relative to my statement, you expect to get back to the low 40s at some point in 23?
spk10: I think he said improvement, so I'll let Mike answer that.
spk11: Yeah, I think 40-ish or slightly above, yeah.
spk10: Some of this is just kind of unknown with what happens to the supply chain, but we're definitely heading in the right direction, yeah.
spk09: All right, guys, I appreciate it. Thank you.
spk10: Okay. Okay, at this point I see we are past time, so I appreciate everybody joining us for our conference call this quarter, and we look forward to talking to you next time. Bye-bye.
spk03: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.
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